Sami on The Magicians 1.2

The Magicians airs at 9pm on SyFy Monday nights.*

Episode two! Just as neat as episode one! This show hits the ground running and keeps going, and I hope it holds up!

This picks up right where last episode left off, right after The Beast plucked out the Dean's eyes and everyone noticed that Q and Co were able to do something about the paralysis spell that had trapped everyone else. Quentin knows that this happened because they tried to summon Alice's brother and somehow that let The Beast through, but he doesn't want the administration to know because that's forbidden and he doesn't want to be expelled. If he is, he'll get mind-wiped, and he can't handle going back to the ill-fitting mess he used to be. 

But he's not the only one hiding things. Penny has always heard voices, since he's a mind reader, but one of them has always been able to cut through all the noise, and taught him all he knows about magic. He's never met him, but he's his only friend--and he just found out that only friend is The Beast that everyone fears and hates and is evil. So he's determined to leave.

In Magical Fight Club, Julia shows up for her tour and falls into a test-trap. They lock her into a meat freezer with another initiate, and they have to figure their own way out. Julia refuses to give in and does what needs to be done--cutting into a human body that's being stored there--to be able to work the spell they need to not die of cold before they can find their way out. Turns out that other initiate was the one in charge, and she likes Julia's spunk.

Meanwhile, Quinn is a mess waiting to see what'll happen. He picks a fight with Penny and gets a spell he doesn't know how to use correctly tossed back at him--and breaks his arm super bad. And he learns that everyone has a dark past here--Elliot killed someone accidentally because he didn't know he was telekinetic until he was pushed too far, and pushed a bully in front of a car. He says that magic comes from pain--that you have to have bad stuff like that to do it.

And Quin is more and more convinced that Fillory, from the books, is a real place. They know that there are alternate worlds that they can sometimes interact with, and it seems too much to be a coincidence that there's that truth, plus these books full of kids who disappear through clocks written by a man who watched several neighbor kids go missing, and these dreams Quinn has been having that gave him the sigil he needed to do the spell that let the Beast in.

In the end, Q doesn't get his mind wiped, and he gets on probation instead of expulsion. The Specialist likes that he's doing his best and he wants to do magic so badly despite not being super great at it. And unbeknownst to him, she has a talk with the Dean--blind and broken-handed--that implies that she and he were part of something similar to this that happened before. And that's a really interesting way for the story to go--the administration of this magical school doesn't block or deny the kids, but wants them to succeed to do what they couldn't do themselves before. 

And there's moles in Breakbills trying to get info and supplies for the Fight Club!

Two episodes in, and this show has so much story in it, but doesn't feel crammed or rushed or shorthanding. It's giving everyone their moments, and it's implying more without having to explicitly state it all. In fact, no one is explicitly saying anything at all. They're letting all these kids figure stuff out for themselves, which is both exciting and potentially disastrous, and it's so interesting to see how it goes. There's so much going on, and it's going to be so cool seeing how it all goes together as the season unfolds.

I'm really enjoying how this show looks. Breakbills is lit so warm and glowy, and then the city is bland and grey, and the Magical Fight Club is all chilly and blue. Magic looks awesome here, all complex systems and precise hand-gestures. And The Beast! SO GOOD. A man made of moths in a suit who can walk through mirrors. Quinn and Co broke got the other students out and broke the mirror, and the school is redoing all the wards, but apparently Alice isn't meant to be there but hasn;t been magically ejected yet, and The Beast got in once, so who's to say he can't get in again? 

What did you think of episode two? What do you think happens next? Tell us in the comments, or come talk to me on Twitter!

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• Sami on The Magicians 1.1

*Because apparently every damn thing needs to be in one hour on one day. But it also reruns later, after midnight, like most SyFy shows do.

Sami on Lucifer 1.1

Lucifer airs at 9pm on Fox Monday nights.*

I'll be honest. I wasn't sure that Fox could Do The Thing when it came to this show. I mean, it's got this mix of literal hellfire-and-demons, sexiness, nightclubs, temptation, and...police procedural? It could easily have been a mess--or to have erred too far on the side of "look how sexy we're being, ooh" and forgotten that we have to like the people, too.

I guess I didn't have to worry about that!**

Lucifer--the guy and the show--is fun, sassy more than sexy, and full of both cackles and giggles. Giggles for the cute and silly parts, cackles for the wisecracks and wrathful vengeance.

Here's what happened in the pilot:

The Devil got tired of hell, and decided to go on vacation, living among people and running a nightclub with a cold-blooded demoness named Maze who totally had some guy under her skirt as she stood at the bar in her intro. He's been around long enough that he's helped a pop star build her career and is now helping her out because she's a mess. He assures her he's not interested in her soul, she just owes him a favor, and the favor is to get herself together. I feel like this is going to be an important point about how his power works. 

He's also been away long enough that Heaven has noticed that no one is in charge of Hell, and that means all those demons are escaping to earth and all those bad people are going unpunished. A big fierce angel comes to try to strongarm him into going home, and it's neat. His wings look weird, but everything slows down real cool when the angel and fallen angel have their talks***, and the way Lucifer reacts like a sulky child makes me think there's more to it than just that he decided one day to up and leave and doesn't want to to back. Like that something bad happened. Something he's specifically running away from that is harder to handle than the fact that demons are escaping all over. Tho not in this episode.

Anyway, the pop star agrees to put her life together and get back on her feet as a functional adult--and then she gets shot to death in a driveby. Lucy is also shot, but he can't die so he gets better, but she was his friend and he's positively wrathful about her death. The killer instantly crashes his car (karma? hand of god?), and before he dies, he tells Lucifer that he just pulled the trigger and he did it for the money.

The shooting draws the attention of the cops--specifically Chloe Decker--which leaves Lucy as a witness. He tells them what he saw, and doesn't bother pretending he's not an ancient immortal being, which makes him look crazy, so she sort of blows him off. She goes on with her case, and he tracks his by getting people to confess things, one of his skills. They meet up again after he's gotten the pop star's boyfriend all riled up, and then "charms" him into confessing that he actually did love her and didn't kill her. Chloe arrests Lucifer for interfering with her case, and he's sort of "ooh, this is new" about it all, and talks her into letting him go along while she investigates his friend's death since he's the one that got her the information that they need to talk to a shrink.

The shrink leads them to an actor the pop star was sleeping with, which leads them back to her manager. The man that Lucifer set her up with to further her career. The man who's career was ruined when she left him at the altar and took her talent with her. During the arrest, he shoots Chloe, and Lucifer uses his invulnerability to protect her from a whole bunch of other bullets, and then makes sure the manager "got what was coming to him". We almost see his demon-face, all red and scary in a cracked and blurry mirror, and his full anger is super impressive. He doesn't say exactly what he did with the guy though...

And it was so much fun.

On the way to the psychiatrist, Chloe has to stop to pick up her daughter, and that whole scene is golden. Lucifer saying he doesn't like kids, then immediately befriending the first one he sees, a tiny gap-toothed girl sitting outside the principal's office for standing up for herself against a bully much older and bigger than her. And then Lucifer spooking the bully before meeting Choe's ex and being totally uninterested in the manhood contest he tries to start, but super interested in the fact that Chloe even has an ex. So great.

And at the psych's office, the woman's reaction to his "charm" has he calls it when he throws a whammy**** on someone. The psychiatrist making a deal with him--information for their case and he'll sleep with her and it'll be good. Him noting that Chloe is immune to his charms, and the psychiatrist noting how much that bothers him. And then when the case is over, Lucifer goes back to the office to hold up his end of the bargain, and makes a new one: he'll sleep with her as much as she wants, if she'll listen to him, because he's got a lot on his mind.

That's a lot of sex, in that scene, which could have been offputting, but the show handles it well and plays it mostly for laughs, and it's all off screen. The fact that Chloe is immune is great, of course, and also gives them a reason to be together in future episodes--as he says, "I've proven myself to be an indispensable resource and you're a pariah in the precinct and need a partner" (or something close to that). He's good at getting people to confess things, and she's immune and he wants to know why. 

The two leads have great chemistry. Lucifer is super charming, but also sort of a dork and a shiny-eyed spectator that's mostly amused by all the stuff that humans get up to. Both of them have implied depth that should be great for further episodes. Trixie is the perfect level of cute-but-not-annoying, and the fact that she instantly loves Lucy and he's so awkward about it is great. There's a lot to work with in this pilot, and if the transition into the actual season goes well, it should be really fun to watch. The pilot was charming--tho not "charming", I didn't feel the need to confess anything--and exciting and balanced and interesting. The usual "and it's a police procedural" works surprisingly well with such a strange addition as the actual living Devil, and it's surprisingly wholesome for all the implied sex and drugs and rock and roll. 

I wonder how long before someone flips out on principle without even bothering to watch the episode?

So basically, I really liked it, and if it stays that good, I could desperately love it. What did you guys think of Lucifer? Share in the comments, or come talk to me on Twitter!

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*Currently after X-Files; don't know what'll happen in a month when the usual monday shows come back...
**Now I just have to worry about Fox's track record of giving us what we want just to cancel it MINUTES LATER OH MY GOD WHY.^
^This is because of the news that they're already moving Second Chance to the Friday deathslot, as well as rearranging other stuff. How is anyone supposed to bother watching, FOX, when everyone knows you'll just cancel it? How are they supposed to try when you keep moving stuff around?
***And the first one happens while Bowie is playing, so there's points for that. The sound track in general is really awesome. All songs mentioning or talking about the devil, it's pretty great.
****Or should I say "bedevils someone"?

Sami on X-Files 10.1 and 10.2

The XFiles airs Monday nights at 8pm through February.

The XFiles is back, you guys. The weirdness, the spookiness, the office, the pencils in the ceiling, the Mulder and Scully working together for the good of the world. And for the most part, it's right.

Episode one was a mythology episode like any, but maybe a little more sensical than some of them. Scully, who's been working at the dimmest-lit hospital in the world for the last seven years and seems to always be splattered in blood there, calls Mulder to tell him someone has been looking for him. That someone is Tad O'Malley, a right-wing nutbar making a fortune off of fear on TV...who happens to have stumbled across exactly what Mulder has been looking for all this time. 

Tad is creepy. Like, I'm not sure if he's supposed to be, but he's basically romancing Mulder AND Scully, and it's creepy. He takes Mulder to a hanger and shows him a triangular ship retroengineered from alien technology, and it's like handing all the cookies in the shop to a five year old. He's sold. Tad's idea is that the conspiracy is real, but the alien part was all subterfuge.

He introduces Scully to a girl who's been abducted a bunch and claims to have alien DNA and to have been impregnated and de-pregnated several times--Scully's story on steroids, basically. She also says she can read minds, and it seems as if she can, and that's a great way to get some backstory in about how Mulder got depressed and Scully wanted to move on with their lives, and it destroyed their relationship. Which is heartbreaking.

Tad also tries actually seducing Scully, which she's apparently vaguely surprised and intrigued by, but the second Mulder needs her, she doesn't care, and that's what I like to see.

Anyway, Tad wants to talk about Sveta (the girl) and Mulder and Scully's work on his show, and Mulder wants to see where this rabbit hole goes, but Scully thinks he's lying. A DNA test of Sveta's blood shows no alien DNA. It falls apart then when she's out and Mulder's in and Tad's confused, and Sveta goes to the news and says Tad paid her to lie, and it's a mess.

But Scully apparently lied about the results AND sequenced her own DNA several times and there actually is weirdness going on there. But Sveta and the hanger with the ship get attacked and destroyed, including all the scientists they met, and so that's the new arc for the mythology--who's telling the truth and who's manipulating the story again, and, of course, as always, what's the actual truth?

It wasn't as non-stop complicated as some of the old mythology episodes, and was pretty straight forward for that. But there was the reveal that Cancer Man managed to survive again, and is apparently still dealing with Mulder poking his nose in--and probably still worrying about whether he should have just killed him or not, I'd assume. Oh, and they've reopened the XFiles, so M&S are Special Agents again!

And the space between the mythology is taken up by Mulder and Scully trying to figure out where they stand with each other, how they want to handle this opportunity, what they feel about it, and how they can be partners again. It was a lot of them bashing heads about whether it's alien or not, whether it matters if it's alien or not, and Scully trying to rein in Mulder's tendency for crazy that led him to the depression that drove them apart. But there was also Scully being a doctor, and Mulder tracing down leads, and the two of them always being there for each other even with all the baggage between them now. Scully says that the Xfiles was the most challenging and intense job she ever had and Mulder was the most challenging and intense relationship, and the way she said it, it sounded like her life now, even as a surgeon and doctor, is less fun and interesting. Scully has been dimmed by time, and it's sad--so, of course, she has to come back to the XFiles. Mulder, for his part, never really left, even though he left the FBI. And, apparently, Skinner was looking out for him all this time anyway.*

So it was basically a happy homecoming for them, eventually, despite all Scully's eyerolling, and it was definitely a happy homecoming for all us fans. It's been 14 years and endless lifetimes, but the XFiles fandom is like:

and is suddenly everywhere. Livetweeting was a joy--a perfect blending of how I used to watch this show with my family and talk about it all week between classes with my friends, and my modern TV habits of watching and talking at the same time. It was almost all positive--from the second Mulder starts Mulder-loguing at the opening and we all switched to all caps and tried not to burst into tears from the sheer joy of having XFiles on our screens again, to the end when we all knew we'd only have to wait one day for the second one. And it was amazing watching everyone get more and more annoyed as the first ep was delayed by the football game.

It's not exactly the same. A lot has happened with politics and conspiracy theories and world events since XFiles went off the air, but the PBS Idea Channel video about it is right: there's a real-world-paranoia reason XFiles existed when it did, and there's a related but distinct real-world-paranoia reason for it to come back now, rather than five years ago or five years from now. It feels like something we need when it's suddenly back, something that we missed and didn't even realize how much. 

Tad's loony conspiracy theories blend in the logical progression of Mulder's with the post-9/11 anti-everything paranoia all over the internet now, making it both more crazy and more real again. Rooting it in the now while maintaining the framework the show has always had.

SO. GOOD.

The second episode was a good old fashioned evil-science episode, and felt more like the team we all know and love. Episode 1, everyone was a little awkward, as they should be, coming back to something they both thought was behind them, but they were back as a team and working right in episode 2.

A scientist goes bonkers and hacks his boss's servers, bleeds at the eyes, and then stabs himself in the ear with a letter opener until he's dead, all because he's hearing a sound no one else can hear. This leads them to his secret boyfriend who tells them he was worried about his kids--even though he's single and doesn't have any.

Scully pulls strings to get them a meeting with the biggest funder of her own hospital, who happens to also be where the leads are all going, and he shows them his pet project: keeping all these kids with really weird deformity-conditions in closed rooms so he can see what makes their genetics do this in isolation, and see if his ideas for treatments work. While they're there, one of the girls almost gets out and freaks when they try to take her back to her room, and things go flying off the food cart the orderlies are pushing. Mulder must be getting rusty; he didn't even comment on obvious mental powers.

But a girl they meet at the hospital, who was pregnant and being kept there, disappears, gets hit by a car, and has her baby taken from her belly, tips Mulder off that he's not trying to cure these kids, he's trying to do hybridization studies. Combined with Mulder experiencing the sound himself and finding out that it's from a kid who was presumed killed at birth trying to talk to people's minds, leads them back to that scientist. That boy is his son, who his mother "let out" to save him from whatever experiments he was doing on her children. The girl at the facility is his older daughter. They know each other on sight, and they know what he did to them. Together, the telekinetic and the telepathic, break out and go on the run after melting their mad-scientist-dad's brain.

I miss Scully's case reports on this one. We don't get a lot of seeing what they conclude from this, since Scully was knocked out and didn't see what happened and Mulder was being tossed across the room and also affected by the sound and missed them escaping, too. Or so he says. 

There's a little indication that Mulder is not quite willing to give up his underground tactics--he stole the first dead guy's phone and used that to find a lot of the people they talk to this ep--but mostly it's good times again. Mulder and Scully sent out by a grumpy Skinner to solve a mystery that is right in their wheelhouse. Scully misses the most unusual stuff because she's knocked out. Mulder catches some of the attacks but isn't the point of them. It was so great to see again.

So far, a third of the way through the revival (already???)** the series is looser about whether or not Scully sees things, and she's long past rigorously denying that anything is extraterrestrial, but they still have the believer and the skeptic roles to play. The show is also the modern desaturated cool-tones rather than the old too-dark-to-see shadowiness, and I miss the cleverness of hiding the low-budget monsters in shadowy corners, but I like how it looks a lot like Fringe now, which supports my theory that Fringe is an offshoot division.

And best of all, it's not bad. I was so afraid that it wouldn't be good, but it's good, and I'm so happy it's back. The fact that they're calling it Season 10 rather than some revival one-shot gives me hope that this will be a regular thing--six or eight or ten episodes in the off-season, between their other TV shows, new ones every year for a while. What a time to be a geek!

What did you guys think of this return to the land of aliens and conspiracies? Tell us in the comments, or come talk to me on Twitter!

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*That scene was so shippy. The starving Mulder-Skinner shippers just got a feast with "I was looking out for you like I've always looked out for you"!
**I love a short series--it means all story and no wheel-spinning--but the seasons do go fast, and then there's so much waiting. Almost all of my fav shows right now^ are short-season, and I feel like all I do is wait!
^XFiles, of course, but also Sherlock, Doctor Who, 12 Monkeys, Killjoys, Dark Matter, Stitchers, Mr Robot, and now The Expanse, Colony, and The Magicians. So much waiting.

Sami on Agent Carter 2.1

Agent Carter airs at 9pm on ABC Tuesday nights*.

Peggy is backkkkkk!!!! And she's awesome right off the bat, as she should be, because she gets so little screentime despite how important she is to the MCU. We got a two-hour / two-episode launch this week, so there's lots to go over.

Jack is still an ass who can't handle a woman who can do things. Peggy managed to track down and set a successful trap for Dottie Underwood, and she'll only talk to Peggy, but when Jack gets a call from Souza over at the new Hollywood office, she's the only agent he can spare because he wants her out of his face. Which means, of course, that Dottie won't cooperate and he can't stop the FBI from taking her away. He does, however, make some career choices that are almost definitely how Hydra gets into Peggy's project.

The ass.

Across the continent in LA, Peggy is happy to see Souza, but he's surprised to see her because he expected more than one and not her. He really shouldn't have been surprised, because he knows Jackass as much as Peggy does, but whatevs. Apparently, they never did have that drink he asked her out on last season, and things got awkward, and it's adorable.

Their case is neat: a lake that froze almost solid in the middle of a heatwave, and a body of a lady in the middle of it. While they're trying to decide if the ice was to cover the murder, or the murder was incidental, the body of the lady keeps not defrosting, and then infects the ME who is supposed to autopsy her. He shatters, she stays frozen, and they track the trail to a science firm that once worked on the rush to create atomic power during the war, and accidentally created a rift in the world in one of their tests. Which led to zero matter: this angry** black stuff that sucks up all energy it comes into contact with, which is why people and things keep freezing.

Along the way, they meet a politician who had been dating the dead girl on the side, and his would-be moviestar wife. He attends at least one overly-pompous Hydra meeting, and she pays off the nobody cop who kills the guy who would have told Peggy what this was all about, but that doesn't really slow our Pegs down much. She's caught the eye of Dr Wilkes, who works for the company experimenting with this thing, and after he gets her to go on a date with him so they can talk about this stuff in a nice safe public place, she talks him into helping her steal the zero matter.

That doesn't go well. It gets out, Wilkes gets either exploded or sucked into a portal***, and Peggy is shaken and scared and sad. Plus, the actress-Hydra-lady gets infected with the zero matter in some new way that shows as a crack in her head rather than a violent freezing.

Around this, as always, is piles of delightfulness.

Mrs Jarvis is amazing. She's a hugging chatterbox who knows exactly what her husband was up to last season and is more on board than he is--which is saying something, since he basically begs Peggy to let him be her partner again because LA is horrible and his job is boring since they stopped working together. She also makes Peggy a gun-garter that hints at her being Peggy's Q and I want that so bad. And she has absolutely not a single shred of jealousy about Peggy's interactions with her husband, even when she walks in on them tussling as he's trying to prove his new fighting skills, and when she signals that she needs him in the middle of the night.

And best of all, she thinks Jarvis is equally as adorable when he's poorly trying to catch a flamingo named Bernard and when he's going off to save the world.

Rose is there, too, transferred with Souza, and she's already got more screentime to be awesome. She's taken up surfing!

Souza now wears low-key Hawaiian shirts and has a tan, and is dating someone that he didn't tell Peggy about. Violet loves Peggy on sight, and wants to show her around town, which makes both of them super uncomfortable, but not so uncomfortable as Pegs is when she finds the ring he was going to give to his cute little nurse girlfriend. Souza, however, still has feelings for Peggy--when she calls Jarvis, and Jarvis calls the office for help, Sousa drops everything and takes what he's got--Rose and Jarvis--and storms off to save her, despite her not needing saving. He was so upset! And he literally shoved people out of his way to get to her when she came out of the wreckage. Rose knows that he cares about her, too. He's not been subtle at all.

It's sort of glorious.

Peggy is semi oblivious; she likes him, too, but she steps back when she sees that he has a girlfriend, and haltingly starts trying to move on with Wilkes. So of course he dies / disappears. It's going to give Peggy a complex. She can't catch a break when it comes to love, and that makes her attempts to make friends and open up to people that much sadder.

Agent Carter is off to a great start for season two! It's snappy, it's delightfully vintage, and it's now set in a great time and place for Hollywood, and an interesting point in history as the world recovers from the war and tries to figure out what happens next. That's hinted at when Red Foreman offers Jack a place in whatever comes after the now-going-obsolete-he-says SSR. Hydra is making moves all over the place in the background, and it'll be interesting to see how it does that without Peggy, who fought them directly not long ago, noticing what they're doing.

And it's also great how much lady-bonding there is! No one is jealous of Peggy in the lady camp; all the girls think she's the coolest thing and just sort of wrap themselves around her socially clumsy but professionally awesome self and make room for her in their lives without her having to prove anything.

Her and Jarvis still have a delightfully Steed-and-Mrs Peele vibe about them, maybe moreso now that he's actively going into her cases with her. Her and Souza have a bond that's under whatever they're both currently doing with their lives, and it's great and sad and charming, and it'll be great seeing them working together again. There's that scientist who feels like the field agents get all the glory and leave him out. There's Rose who is probably the best receptionist in the world. There's the SSR's cover as a casting agent that should offer all sorts of bonkers interludes--and dovetails nicely with Howard Stark's new venture as a movie maker.

There's so much going for this season, and it looks great and is just as delightful as it was before, but with new stories and new complications. If they can avoid letting the Hydra stuff take over the plot like Agents of Shield did, it could be even better than season one! I just hope that the first black character they've had isn't actually dead the same story he's introduced in, because that's lame as crap, no matter how great it is to see Peggy pissed off about racism.

What did you guys like best about these two episodes? What do you think the next episodes are gonna be like? Share in the comments below, or come talk to me on Twitter!

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*For the next six or eight weeks, anyway, and up against Shadowhunters and iZombie, which is a terrible crime of programming if you ask me.
**It's like literally angry, all thrashing around and attacking things. It looks like the portal from SHIELD when it's active, and like the Ether from Thor 2, and I hope that's  intentional and not just a lack of imagination from the SFX guys, because think of those implications, dudes.
***I'm rooting for portal so a) SHIELD can meet him later when he falls through or they find wherever that stuff goes, or b) Peggy can find him again but with a Blink-episode-of-Doctor-Who time-drift where he's old and they've missed their opportunity for love and it's sad and they have to deal with it, but he's got info now that she needs. If they go that way, I want him to not die like in Blink, but to get hired as a consultant or a scientist or whatever, and still be sweet on Peggy.

Sami on Colony 1.1

Colony airs at 10pm on USA Thursday nights.

Okay, there's another cool new show on the block, guys,

The first episode is a little slow at first. It starts out looking normal, with a family getting ready for the day's work, and then there's this cool shift--the normal mechanics work is actually handing and moving alien power generators. The typical wifely home-life is actually working for the resistance in secret.

Will (must not call him Sawyer) then forges papers to go from one part of the city to another against the rules to find his son, and that's when things get interesting. See, the city of LA is divided up into these huge walled segments, it's implied the walls went up quickly, and they don't look like cement or something. They're also watched by flying alien drones and human collaborators called Redhats. 

And they're the focus of resistance attacks.

Will is the only survivor of one of those bombings, and it makes him noticeable; to get out of being punished, he's recruited by the governor to try to bring down the resistance he doesn't know his wife is a part of. They woo him with all these luxuries that no one can get anymore--like bacon*--while threatening his family if he refuses, so he has to say yes.

Meanwhile, Katie, the wife and mother of this family, has her own story going. She's trying to barter for insulin for her sister's family, and gets super tough when they try to swindle her--but also learns that dogs can be used to home-brew your own insulin, so maybe she'll have a new cottage industry now? 

And she's nervously involved with the resistance, though she didn't know about the bombing that almost kills her husband and makes him visible to the powers that be, and when Will is recruited, she offers them the opportunity to use her as a double agent. Which should be more than ripe for story-fodder!

This first episode, like I said, is slow. It's from some of the people who made Lost, so it's not answering any questions, like, at all, and I know that bothered some people. It also feels a little like typecasting for Sarah Wayne Callies since she's once again in an apocalypse (of sorts) with a husband that went missing, a kid who isn't in the house where he should be, and up to something sneaky. But it's also setting up a lot of story, and since we have ten episodes this season, we should have enough space to really get into the details of this story, without getting bogged down in wheel-spinning like mystery-based long-series can get.**

Here's what we have so far:

• Mysterious aliens*** that we have yet to see anything but the drones and that one space ship**** launch from took over and walled off the humans.
• When they did, they made cars almost obsolete, so everyone rides bikes, and I wonder if that means they're trying to save us?
• Everything is rationed and work is regulated.
• People can't leave their districts without forging their papers, but there seems to be a big underground in forged papers and human-smuggling, and it's not that hard when someone else isn't trying to blow you up.
• Will and Katie have a middle kid who was somewhere else when the walls went up and they don't know what happened to him since. He just had his twelfth birthday.
• The resistance is incredibly vague--they're illegal, but do they want to free the humans or are they just rejecting the aliens? Do the aliens want nefarious things, or are they just misunderstood?
• The other two kids haven't had much story of their own yet, but they're going to be between the resistance and the collaborators now that their parents are each on one side, so they've probably got something coming up.
• There's a little bit of a Falling Skies vibe, but less obviously scifi and more creeping and subtle, so far.

Hopefully, now that things are set up, we can get things moving on the story! If Mr Robot is any indication on how USA is doing their high-concept shows now, we can probably expect things to keep being different than we think they are, and for the ten episodes to get super rich and complicated with story--which is exactly how an invasion-or-colonization story should be!

What did you guys think about the first episode of Colony? Share here in the comments, or come talk to me on Twitter!

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*I maintain that bacon would be like gold in the apocalypse.
**Cough - everything after the first season of Lost by these same people - cough.
***Probably aliens.
****Probably a spaceship, or some other sort of transportation-event.

Sami on Second Chance 1.1

Second Chance airs at 9pm on Fox Wednesday nights.

I like it, guys. I like is so much, and it's on Fox and I'm scared. If someone from Fox is paying attention to these things: stop giving us good shows and then cancelling them. Make them all short-run closed series, or leave them alone. This is why people don't bother watching your shows.

That being said. It's so neat.

Terrible bitter old man Jimmy used to be Sheriff and stepped down years ago under a scandal where they say he planted evidence. Now he's just mean and crochety and on bad terms with his son Duvall, but good terms with his granddaughter Grace--and also a callgirl named Bettina. He's staying with his son, going through old boxes, when he witnesses a breakin that ends in them tossing him off a bridge so it looks like suicide.

But Jimmy has a super-rare genetic marker that makes him perfect for a secret new experiment.

Twins Mary and Otto live for eachother and made billions on a new social platform called Lookingglass. But Mary has a kind of cancer that can't be treated and less than a year left, and Otto can't understand the world without her, so he invented a way to bring living things back from the dead. It's worked on fish so far, and Mary wants him to do it right and test his way up through mice, rats, and monkeys before getting to human trials. Otto is terrified of losing her however, and when Jimmy's body is logged and he finds that marker, he jumps on the chance and skips right to humans.

It works. 75 year old Jimmy is now 35. He's also still kind of terrible, but aware that he's been given a chance to try again, determined to solve his own murder, and something like 12 times stronger than expected. Because of that extra strength and Otto's reprogramming, his white blood cells can literally fight off death*. He agrees to help Mary if she lets him help his son solve his murder.

It's fairly easy to figure out that the main guy that tossed him was his son's partner, and he shows the evidence Mary gives him to Duvall, who isn't happy but does the right thing and turns him in...except it's not just his partner who's corrupt. The baddies take him away and try to toss him off that same bridge, but Jimmy pushes his limits and finds them in time and Duvall manages to keep him from getting revenge the easy way.

But Duvall is convinced that Jimmy is related to him--he can't suspect that he's actually his dad, and he doesn't seem to recognize him, so apparently the process changes him enough that he doesn't look like pictures of his younger self anymore. He thinks Jimmy is some secret half-brother; Jimmy doesn't tell him he's not, and that would actually be a really useful cover.

But this is all just the plot. The really cool stuff is all the things around the plot. The tech is really cool, and already being used in morally ambiguous ways that will hopefully blur the lines between good guys and bad guys in compelling ways. The tank is nice and creepy but also high tech enough to be believable. And it's also believable that there would be limits to a first human trial--he's young and strong and "possibly super potent"**, but he also has to go back into the tank every twelve hours or he rejects like a transplanted organ and if he dies that time, he dies for real.

Otto is strange and skittish and almost definitely hiding other secret projects. Mary is soft and kind, but not a wimp; she's the public face of the company and brave and strong enough to stand up to someone who is 12 times stronger than expected when he takes the whole young-again thing badly--but not so brave that she does anything stupid. Jimmy is macho in a really outdated way that's a little distasteful and should be fun to see him not getting away with anymore, now that he's not 75 and frail. He's also smart and resourceful, adaptable and driven, and the episode hints that he's a natural at detective work, even when he's not trying, which should be useful.

His relationship with his kids should be fun to explore, since he's now basically the same age as them, give or take, and he has the chance to know them the way a sour and disgraced father never could. And from the brief interaction he had after the procedure with Grace, it looks like she takes to him right away. Who wants to bet she's the one who figures it out first?

And probably most interesting should be the way he interacts with the twins. They're basically living in their own little world, but they've created something they need--his cells--in someone who isn't part of that world in his mind, no matter how much he is in his body. Is it his idea to start solving crimes, or is it a side-effect of what they're doing elsewhere? How will the FBI handle this mysterious weirdo consulting on cases***?

And the ad for next week gives a nod to the very basic fact that Mary needs him to survive, so where will that go? Physical intimacy to go with the medical intimacy****? Dividing her loyalties between the man she needs to keep alive and the brother who can't live without her, or will they be a balanced triangle of needs and hopes? Jimmy using that need as a lever to get what he wants, or sacrificing his own wants for her well-being? How graciously will he handle this new situation?

I can't wait to see.

How did you guys like the start of Second Chance? Are you as salty as I am about Fox's history with cool original scifi shows? Share in the comments or come talk to me on Twitter!

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*As we find out right before the weirdest and lamest line in the show: "that's you, going into me" ::facepalm::
**If he doesn't accidentally knock someone up / someone doesn't get herself knocked up, and then they have to deal with a half-genetically-advanced baby, they're missing a great opportunity.
***You know, because that's so rare. If all TV shows were in the same world, the FBI and local cops would be consulting with Patrick Jane, Henry Morgan, Sherlock Holmes, Jane Doe, Brian Finch, John Reese...And every time I think of that, I just think about how cool it would be if they all met in the same office, since they're all doing the same job, essentially.
****I ship it already, I'm such trash.

Sami on Shadowhunters 1.1

Shadowhunters airs at 9pm on Freeform* Tuesday nights.

You remember when Stitchers started, and I said the first episode was too fast and talky and not super naturalistic, but was also cool and kind of addicting?** That's apparently just how this channel does pilots, because this one was like that.

It's also both like and not like the books, and there was so much complaining on the tweets that it was hard to get through all that to get to the tweets that were more positive. Because it IS different--but it's also a different thing. They didn't just randomly change stuff like they did for the movie, they created something inspired by the books but not the same as the books, and they were very clear about that from the beginning. So on it's own merits, here's how the pilot went.

Clary is turning 18, and her mom keeps not just telling her what that means for her--namely, that through her whole life, she's been having her memories manipulated*** but now that she's adult, it's going to wear off, and that apparently also means that people who have been looking for her and her mom can find them. Jocelyn gives Clary a stele, but doesn't tell her what it is, what it means, or how to use it.

Meanwhile, Clary gets into a neat art program she wanted to get into, and hangs out with Simon and his band. But the art that got her in was mostly all those things she's not supposed to remember, and the band's gig happens to be near a Downworlder nightclub where she sees people no one else can see kill people who burst into flames and open up crazy jaws that aren't human. She tries to tell her mom what happened, and to her credit, Jocelyn tries to tell her, but they're attacked and she pushes Clary through a portal while she stays behind to stop the people following them. 

She manages to burn down their house, but doesn't stop herself from being captured, though she does put herself into a magical coma. They take her back to Valentine who has a hideout in Chernobyl of all places, and he actually seems to care about her and be mad that she's not conscious and whole as he told them to keep her. This scene was especially cool because 1) Jocelyn was a Shadowhunter and it's really neat seeing her fighting like one with my actual eyes, and 2) it would have been really easy to make Valentine a caricature like they did in the movie****, but they went just as evil but also much more human and a little more subtle than that.

Clary winds up at the precinct where Luke, her mom's sort of boyfriend, works as a cop, but her timing is not good and she sees him telling the people who were chasing her that she and her mom mean nothing to him. So she runs off. This scene was not so great, though, because the cuts were sudden and weird, and there was little context on Luke to know that he's bluffing--it just sounds like he's creepy and mean when he was nice one scene ago. Especially since he doesn't get beaten up or anything, he's just being cold. Also, there's no Jace at this point, so she has no context for anything that's happening, and when he saves her and she wakes up, there's a lot of weird exposition.

Inside the institute, he tries to tell her what's going on, but he's not nearly as suave as he thinks he is and they keep getting interrupted, and Clary comes off as a little dense and a little not-freaked-out-enough by finding a tattoo on her body that she didn't consent to. But they got it right that her main focus is finding her mom, and the start of falling for Jace is handled pretty well. Even better is the way Simon is always on the outside and trying to solve things in normal ways, but honestly trying to help, and how he has no chill for the crazy stuff happening around them. 

They're a little heavy-handed about putting Clary literally between Jace and Simon, but what evs. It's a pretty good set up for the story overall, and it's worth seeing more of.

The actors seem a little inexperienced and not quite settled into their characters, but they do a pretty good job of balancing the clash between normal life things and really weird things. The fight scene at the club was cheesy as hell, but later ones are better. The plot moves along way too fast, especially in the first half of the episode, and it really feels like it should have been a two-hour or two-part premier so that we could have more of the normal world, more of Jocelyn trying to tell her what's up, more of her having weird experiences before everything goes to crap, and more of the family interactions that were totally bulldozed over. As it is, we hardly know what's going on with her mom and Luke, with her and her school, with anything, before it all falls apart. And we don't get Jace investigating her and trying to figure her out before he rescues her, so his fascination with her looks less epic and more sudden.

The two biggest changes were Luke's job, and the Institute. Having Luke as a cop with a public job and a partner and crimes to solve will change things in unexpected ways. He's not keeping to himself or hiding in stacks of books, so he's already a more public and confident figure than he was in the books--and there's all these new characters we have to figure out. That's cool--we don't have a cheat sheet on them, so we have to actually watch them to see what happens. It's also strange, because so much of the rest seems a little cheat-sheeted.

The Institute is now sort of a supernatural CSI with fancy computers and displays and lots of other people, and that's strange. In the books, a lot of the problems the Institute has comes from how behind-the-times they are, refusing to update their tech and deal with the mortal world, and with how few their numbers are. That doesn't seem to be the case here. It does, however, separate them from, say, Sleepy Hollow and Supernatural, where they go after the baddies alone and with only their wits and some basic magic. It's more organized, which does suit a professional evil-chasing organization. We'll have to see how it goes.

The only other really big change so far seems to be Maureen. She was a younger fangirl of Simon's band in the books, all childlike and obsessive, and close enough to the edge that she goes crazy when weird things start happening to her later on. Here, she's as old as everyone else, and a part of the band's support system, doesn't seem all that obsessed with Simon himself, and does seem pretty self-confident and competent. We'll see how that changes things later on, but I guess it doesn't really matter that much now.

But they got Magnus Bane so right.

It was fun, in between the strange bits where people talk too much or sound off, and it'll be super interesting to see how the story develops--how close will it be to the books? How different will it go? What will the changes wash out like as the story unfolds? Will it just suddenly click and turn from okay to awesome in the second or third episode like Stitchers did? It's good enough to stick around and see!

What did you guys think about Shadowhunters? Share in the comments or come talk to us on Twitter!

 Tweets about #shadowhunters from:pirategirljack, OR from:sineater_danyi, OR from:kiddle, OR from:trincynna, OR from:ohgress, OR from:manisandmakeovers, OR from:acciolacquer include:retweets

*Used to be ABCFamily, but they're rebranding to be grittier and such.
**You probably don't because that was on my old page at Examiner and not here, and that's not mine anymore. But I did say something like that.
***Obligatory reminder that I really hate the "I didn't tell you vital pieces of information because I wanted to keep you safe" trope.
****I love me some Jonathan Rhys Meyers, but I think he was given a lunatic mess of that character and even he couldn't make it better.

Sami on The Expanse 1.6

The Expanse airs at 10pm on Syfy Tuesday nights.

Just past the half-way point, and it feels like the Scrappy Survivors are just getting started! As was tweeted to me:

@pirategirljack It's a big story. #TheExpanse

— Daniel Abraham (@AbrahamHanover) January 13, 2016

This week, they dock at super-awesome-looking Tycho Station, where they're met by someone who is known for not being super on their side--the guy given credit for blowing up those kids last week. He basically takes over: they'll never be able to hide a Martian ship from all the Martians coming through the station, so he's gonna take over the ship and the mission.

They say no; Holden says this is all his fault, all these dead people and exploded ships, so he's going to be the one to take the info about the mysterious new ships to where it needs to be himself. Of course, the rest of the Survivors go with; they're a team. But along the way, they have to come around to it. Alex and Amos go to a bar, where we find out that Amos apparently grew up in a brothel, though he doesn't say in what context. Alex was married but loved space more*. Both of them are more complicated than they first seemed, and are much more likable now that they are.

Naomi and Holden get drunk and toast Shed, but they don't notice they're being watched by a creeper with a bionic eye. The tech looks fancy, so someone from Earth?

And Fred finds the little chip with the new ships' specs on it, that Holden didn't know to look for and would really help his mission. He doesn't mention it to Holden, and he seemed to know exactly where to look for it.

Meanwhile, on Ceres, Miller gets seriously beat up by the rebel leader / mob boss Jared Harris With An Accent, and they have a really great philosophical discussion about life in the Belt. He killed his sister, but he thinks it's a mercy killing, not murder, because she was so damaged by being born and raised in the Belt that she couldn't survive and her existence was a burden. He didn't say what she thought about it. Miller says "everyone dies for the cause but you". They argue over whether Julie Mao knew what she was getting into or not.

And Jared Harris With An Accent realizes that Miller is in love with her. All he says is "Yeah," in a totally hopeless tone of voice. I'm a sucker for longing and pining and it's amazing. They did that scene so well.

He then gets dumped in an airlock and half-spaced, but his old flame saves him--by killing the thugs when she'd never killed anyone before, and when she freaks and he comforts her, and she tries to go back to old ways, he turns her down. She's confused, and he looks like he's sick of himself, and it's also a great scene,

Miller takes all his pieces of info to his boss--and she locks up the files, strips him of all his clearances, and fires him. On the spot. Because she's on the take and he's too close to the truth. She doesn't kill him, though, so there's that.

And back on Earth, the Ambassador is still pulling strings that look a lot like burning bridges, trying to figure out what all of this means.

The episode ends with the Scrappy Survivors heading off to their next mission on their new (and newly renamed) ship, and it literally feels like everything until here has been prologue--which is amazing. This is the start of the second half of the season, and the first half was amazing, so how much more amazing will the second half be?

The Expanse is so cool. It looks great, it's complex, it's packed with politics but not boring because of it, and I think that's because the characters are so flawed and solid and real. Miller falling for someone half his age who he's never met, and because of wanting to know what happened to her, uncovering a crazy plot to destroy everything. Holden trying to do the right thing and getting himself and his crew right in the middle of the crazy that's starting a war. Rebels trying to get a little of what they work for for themselves and their families. And who knows what Mars wants, or Earth. It's stunning. It looks gorgeous and so very real. It's exciting. And it's about hope and loss and mystery and desperation.

I didn't expect to love this show and these people so much.

What did you guys think of this week?

Tweets about #theexpanse from:pirategirljack, OR from:sineater_danyi, OR from:kiddle, OR from:trincynna, OR from:ohgress, OR from:manisandmakeovers, OR from:acciolacquer include:retweets

• Sami on The Expanse 1.5
• Sami on The Expanse 1.2
• Sami on The Expanse 1.1

*Amos apparently isn't as straight as he's seemed, based on how he reacted to the people in the bar. And Alex didn't say whether it was a wife or a husband he had and lost. These are character things to think about and I hope they come up again!

Sami on The Expanse 1.5

The Expanse airs at 10pm on Tuesday nights on Syfy.

You guys. This show is so great. I can hardly believe how this channel has suddenly jumped from, like, 100% dull or crap to this whole new world of awesome and well made and really gorgeous new shows.

This week:

Holden and the Scrappy Survivors have successfully (mostly) not been killed in two ship explosions and are trying to figure out what to do, but they're aware of how it must look--all this not dying as things explode--and that leads to limited choices. They get a call from someone on Tycho Station that shouldn't have been able to find them, and he offers them safety if they go there. Naomi is flat against it, but Amos sways her; she's got a past she's not talking about and it has to do with people like the guy who called them.

Meanwhile, they find out that Holden is the Mockingjay for the riots breaking out on Ceres, and none of them know what to do with that information--and not being arrested as terrorists is more pressing. And they rename their ship to claim it as their own.

Through the whole episode, there's these clips of a strike on a mining platform; they wanted to get safer conditions for all their children, who were all growing up with brain damage because of how unhealthy the place was--low air, toxic fumes, etc--and they finally ran out of options and surrendered...But they were destroyed anyway. And it was the guy who offered our Survivors a safe haven.

Dun dun DUN!

Back on Ceres, Miller and his rockstar hair* are still looking for Julie Mao. He's connected that her ship was on an intercept course that fell apart right where all the other ships keep blowing up, and that her "pampered rich girl disappearance" is connected to all this war-mongering. He's also tracked down the guy who got her on a ship, and there's a really great scene with clashing badassery where he finds out she was working actively in dangerous situations to save children, and then looks all like he's totally in love with her.**

His partner is somehow not dead, despite having been pinned to a wall with a steel pipe, and he managed to crawl back to where people were so he could be saved. How awful must that have been? Crawling across all that distance to a thoroughfare with a giant stake through his chest? And how did he get off the wall? I'm going to blame it on his regular-gravity self dealing with the low-grav station. Miller is not super happy with what happened, and totally dismisses the local lady of the night who has been helping partner-boy learn the local language, which starts a fight between them.

Miller's walking a line between being a Belter and being a cop, and it's getting thinner. In the course of his investigations, he's gotten the attention of the local mob boss who wants to recruit him, and wants to take Ceres for the Belters who live and work and die there, since they see so little payback for all their sacrifice. Which is understandable, and since it's Jared Harris, it's compelling and a little creepy. It's unclear whether he's being a badguy or not this time; he does that grey-between-moralities really well.

We didn't visit Earth this week, and Mars still hasn't been visited, but the Survivors are on a sleek new Martian ship with a dead Martian (who was really cool) frozen in the infirmary. It doesn't seem like they searched his pockets, so where's that data thing his Captain gave him, and when will it come up again?

We've got ten episodes this season, and that makes this the mid-point: the place where things start falling into place and make everything look different. So good job, show! War is ever closer, the Scrappy Survivors are stuck in the middle of it, there's some third party out there*** picking on both sides and leaving almost no survivors so that it looks like Mars is attacking, the various Belter groups are fed up with getting used, and the few people who could throw light on the situation are missing or dead.

Everything should start sliding toward the finale now, probably with lots of awesome space battles, but what else will be discovered along the way? That's probably the best part of this show--it's not just awesome ships blowing up other awesome ships--it's also this complex and interesting mystery that everyone has a piece of but no one is yet connecting up, except for Miller. Which, of course, puts him right in the danger zone between all these factions as soon as he starts talking.

The Expanse started out good, but now it's addictive and impressive and hard to guess, and that makes it amazing!

What did you think of this week's episode? Share in the comments, or come talk to me on Twitter!

Here's what the Professional Fangirls had to say about this week's The Expanse:

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*Someone on Twitter suggested it should have it's own name, it's so noticeable every time he takes his hat off. I kind of dig it, and the other half-shaved hairstyles going on in this show; it makes me think dangerously about cutting hair...
**They haven't even met and I ship them, damn.
***I'm voting for aliens. There's not enough aliens on TV these days. It's probably some secret faction of one government or another, but I really want aliens.